These wonderful images of the aurora borealis occurs as plate 4 and a text illustration on page 113 in Amedee Guillemin (1826-1893) and edited by Silvanus P. Thompson (1851-1916), the lovely ...

Rare, scarce, interesting, and unusual books for sale, mostly in the history of physics, math, and technology. The bookstore site is part of a larger daily blog for the History of Holes, Dots, Lines, ...

'Russia reveals Cobalt Bomb; Total World Destruction Ahead", ending of Philip K. Dick's "Exhibit Piece", 1952 I never really thought that much about what Dr. Strangelove was fiddling with to calculate ...

Here's the lead on a short post I made a few years ago on a Dublin tour: I just came across these image that I made on a trip to Dublin some years ago. Carrying the bags for my wife, Patti Digh, who ...

So this is a loose-and-pulled-thread post--I bumped into something that led me somewhere coming face-to-face with an interesting reference to an unusual "first" in the history of cartography. I found ...

The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, conducted by David Brewster, Richard Taylor, Richard Phillips, and Robert Kane, volume XVIII, January-June 1841, and ...

This is the first installment of a chronology of the anatomical representation of the heart, along with a few metaphorical images tossed in. No commentary yet--just a quick post. All images are either ...

This beauty appears in the pages of Scientific American for 1896, and discusses a proposal for a bridge to connect Manhattan to Jersey, and to do so spectacularly. The plan was for the bridge to be ...

The Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and the Arts (of the Royal Society of Great Britain). London, printed by John Murray, volume XIX, 1825; 8.5x5”, vii, (v), 5 engraved plates, 384 pp, ...

This enormous, quiet image appeared in The Illustrated London News on 23 June 1945, just weeks after the termination of WWII in Europe. It graphically presents every ship lost by Great Britain in the ...

Had there been no Newton every school child would know the name of Robert Hooke (1635-1703) in its place—he was polymathic, totally energized, big-thinking non-sleeping experimentalist and ...

These images present an excellent invitation to understanding the size and scope of one section of the opium industry in India. I found these pictures in the 29 July 1882 issue of the Scientific ...